After watching the video of the death of Adam Johnson multiple times, I believe this is murder. At first I thought it was incidental contact and accidental, but it becomes apparent that the opposing player Matt Petgrave was targeting Johnson. Yes there was another player in between the two of them, but you can see Petgrave is following Johnson’s path. As Johnson starts to pivot to go behind his teammate, Petgrave puts on the brakes with his right leg (you can see the snow kick up) and lifts his left leg to make contact with Johnson. You may say the intent of Petgrave was to slow down Johnson, but the horror of it all is how high the skate goes. Call it what you want, murder or manslaughter, I see it as intentional. I would like to know what others who follow hockey as intently as I do think. Please post your thoughts.
Johnson's teammate had a front row seat less than 20 feet away and said it was a freak collision and not intentional. With the phone camera video, it is very difficult to determine what really happened due to the quality, distance, angle and parallax effect.
Plus every hockey player knows how dangerous their skates can be and I find it hard to believe that a guy who has played as long as Petgrave would intentionally injury someone that way.